Drawn from the ranks of the lower nobility, the knights of France occasionally engaged in robbery and plunder. Those who were more highly educated and gifted sometimes combined the professions of singer and poet, passing from one castle to another singing praises of their hosts. After the Crusades, great lords and even kings devoted themselves to the service of love and song, and entered into keen rivalry for the laurels of singer and poet, as is pictutred here in this illustration from the early 1900s.